| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3] | Free, online CAT tool looking for beta testers Thread poster: Philomelius
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| Sorry to hear this | Dec 10, 2013 |
Philomelius wrote:
And dear Paul, I wish what you said was true. Where were you when I couldn't upgrade to SP3 and had to wait three weeks for SDL support to contact me, by the way? Nice to see you in this thread!
Dear Philomelius,
I can honestly say this is very surprising to me. The support team, even if you don't have a support contract, are very quick to respond. I tried to look you up to see what happened but can’t identify you at all even using your skype name... I guess you’re using an alias. But please do email me directly at [email protected]
Philomelius wrote: Joking aside, SDL proprietary formats are seldom used by agencies because of the overwhelming complexity and lack of support of the SDL product suite. We will integrate your formats though, but as usual, it is regrettable that SDL formats are so intentionally hard to convert even though they are essentially XLIFF, XML, etc., with an unnecessary proprietary later, turning universal, open formats painstakingly developed by others into proprietary ones. You are, by a large margin, the only publisher to adopt such practices. I guess you think it locks down your customers, hindering their ability to change tools, but history has proven that it seldom works. Have a good day 
There is nothing made hard to convert. The SDLXLIFF files are XLIFF. Please feel free to email me on this as well and I’ll gladly help you with any difficulties that you are having.
On your other comments... I think that despite my offer to help if you can give me some concrete examples of where you’re struggling, it seems you’d rather poison the thread. Sorry you feel the need to do this.
Regards
Paul
| | | | Samuel Murray 
Netherlands
Local time: 22:52
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Some formats are just easier to support than others (for some people) | Dec 10, 2013 |
SDL Support wrote:
But you are still using this word proprietary and it’s very misleading. Proprietary file formats mean that the provider either encodes the files in some way that you you need the originating tool to use them, or that they are licensed to protect the way they can be used.
That is indeed Wikipedia's definition of it, but I myself have always understood "proprietary" to be somewhat broader than that, simply because of the ordinary meaning of the word. Wikipedia and others regard the opposite of "proprietary format" to be "open format", which is unfortunate, but it does form a useful starting point for discussion.
In that sense, XLIFF is an open format, because anyone who wishes to support it fully can support it fully by simply studying and implementing the specification. In the same sense, SDLXLIFF must be considered a proprietary format, because even though it is an extended version of XLIFF, its specification is not publically, freely available (unless I'm mistaken, and then you're welcome to post a URL to prove me wrong), and so anyone who wants to support it fully can't simply study and implement the specification of it.
For many vendors who want to support SDLXLIFF the only option is to offer "partial support", which is based on sample files generated by them in an attempt to trigger and study all types of code that a user of SDLXLIFF files are likely to encounter.
Another point to remember is that a vendor may simply hold off supporting a format because the skill set of his developers leans towards other formats that they can support more readily. For amigoCAT, SDLXLIFF is one of the last formats that they'll support (if I understand correctly) simply because for their developers it is a format that they struggle most with, compared to the other formats.
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 22:52
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
SDL Support wrote:
I think that despite my offer to help if you can give me some concrete examples of where you’re struggling, it seems you’d rather poison the thread.
I'm confused... is Gyula Erdész and Philomelius the same person, then?
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Samuel Murray wrote:
I'm confused... is Gyula Erdész and Philomelius the same person, then?
I was, rather cryptically, referring to my original post in this thread that sparked this little discussion. All I did was ask what he found so hard about this?
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| Specification | Dec 10, 2013 |
Samuel Murray wrote:
In that sense, XLIFF is an open format, because anyone who wishes to support it fully can support it fully by simply studying and implementing the specification. In the same sense, SDLXLIFF must be considered a proprietary format, because even though it is an extended version of XLIFF, its specification is not publically, freely available (unless I'm mistaken, and then you're welcome to post a URL to prove me wrong), and so anyone who wants to support it fully can't simply study and implement the specification of it.
I see where you're coming from Samuel. But for me the points are these:
- SDLXLIFF is based on XLIFF (this is enough to support the translation of the text)
- The extensible parts only need to be retained and not supported. In fact it may be beyond the capability of some tools to support the information provided anyway because they work in other ways.
So I think “full” support for someone elses compliant XLIFF under the current specification is unlikely full stop. The best you can do is use the API, if provided, to create the format you need by letting the tool that knows how to handle these things do it. Then you use the output configured to the way you want it. We provide all the information needed for this with the SDK/API when you sign up for the OpenExchange program. This is free.
Regards
Paul
| | | | Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 22:52
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
| Roundtripping | Dec 10, 2013 |
SDL Support wrote: Gyula Erdész wrote: Wordfast Pro: http://www.wordfast.com/support_release_notes.html "Added SDLXLIFF filter to roundtrip SDLXLIFF files" Emphasis on roundtrip. As a software delevoper, why do you need to roundtrip something that is fully clear, open and accessible? They have added support for SDLXLIFF. Where does this demonstrate a problem? They mention roundtrip... you roundtrip DOC files, XLSX files... nothing odd about this as far as I can see. Roundtrip simply means you open the source (SDLXLIFF in this case), translate it and save it again.
No, I agree with Gyula that "roundtrip" does not simply mean "translate", as Paul seems to imply. I have encountered the word here and in other forums, and my understanding of the word is that it implies that the original, intended tool for the file format must be available for pre-processing and post-processing. In other words, the translator's own tool is incapable of dealing with the file unless the file is pre-treated somehow, and that the translated file may need some additional treatment (either in a third tool or in the intended tool) to make it client-ready.
==
In the case of WFP, well, what their SDLXLIFF filter does is this (among other things):
1. It shows empty segments from the SDLXLIFF file in WFP as empty segments.
2. It shows non-empty segments from the SDLXLIFF file in WFP as non-empty segment.
3. It does not show any segment status whatsoever.
4. It allows the translator to edit segments that in SDLXLIFF is marked as "completed" or "signed off".
5. When the WFP creates a final SDLXLIFF file, it retains the orignial segment statuses for segments that had segment statuses (i.e. it does not change a "signed off" segment to something else, even if the translator edited that segment).
6. The final SDLXLIFF file has the source text copied into the target field of every segment.
7. There is no way to distinguish in Studio between segments that used to be non-empty beforehand and segments that used to be empty beforehand, because all segments are now non-empty and they all have the same segment status as they had originally.
Clearly the WFP people did a bad job here... or... perhaps... perhaps their filter is intentionally meant as an ugly hack (a "roundtrip" filter, so to speak).
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